


I'm giving you a nightcall to tell you (How I feel)

by Xenomorphic



Category: Dark (TV 2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Daemons, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Daemons, Drama, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, I know this is Dark but I just want you all to know what you're getting into, In case you were looking for something less bleak, M/M, Romance, Snippets, TW: mentions of accidental incest, TW: mentions of character suicide, TW: mentions of past incest, tw: mentions of past abuse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-22
Updated: 2020-08-24
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:21:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26045689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Xenomorphic/pseuds/Xenomorphic
Summary: When Hanno Tauber appears on the first day of class and sits on one of the back corners of the room, there are three reasons why people care: he’s new in Winden, he’s attractive, and there is no dæmon in sight.
Relationships: Jonas Kahnwald & Bartosz Tiedemann, Jonas Kahnwald & Michael Kahnwald | Mikkel Nielsen, Jonas Kahnwald & Noah | Hanno Tauber, Jonas Kahnwald/Noah | Hanno Tauber, Minor or Background Relationship(s), past Jonas Kahnwald/Martha Nielsen
Comments: 6
Kudos: 40





	1. Act I

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry if you came here because you read You're a part of me and thought this would be nice too. It might be full on romance, but that's about it.  
> Silja and Charlotte are so very freeform and not really in character.  
> Disclaimer: I own nothing Dark related, I just want to adopt a few of these precious children and stop anything from happening to them ever again. Title comes from Nightcall by London Grammar; I understand the original version of the song is from Kavinsky (which is great all on its own), but I adore Hannah Reid's voice just a bit too much.

I

When Hanno Tauber appears on the first day of class and sits on one of the back corners of the room, there are three reasons why people care: he’s new in Winden, he’s attractive – with a pretty looking face and a lean build –, and there is no dæmon in sight.

It doesn’t take long for everyone to start speculating on why he’s there, in the middle of nowhere – and more importantly, why he and his sister are staying at their Aunt’s – and it’s only a little longer before enamored girls and friendly boys realize that the newcomer might be hot and smart and all things nice, except for social.

Even then, it’s well over a month later that someone notices the tiny bird perched at the very top of the blinds and tries to shoo it, only to be answered with a resounding, defiant “fuck off”.

So, by the time Tauber has been in Winden for a few months, him and his little bird dæmon manage to become another piece of the scenery, just like any other student, but maybe drawing a bit more attention from time to time.

Nobody ever finds out his dæmon’s name.

*

Before the auditions and casting for Ariadne begin, Martha convinces Jonas and Bartosz to go watch the last of the five performances of Macbeth with her. Neither of them cares much about it, but they can’t just leave her hanging and by the end of the evening Jonas kind of likes it, especially the witches and the décor.

Around halfway through the play he sees a tall boy standing up from his seat, a couple of rows before them. He’s by the end of the row and leaves quick and quiet, hardly bothering anyone, and Jonas’ attention is drawn to it only because he’s on the same position on his row. And he would forget all about it as soon as it happens, if it weren’t for the bird.

Because of the lighting, he can only see the silhouette of the small bird precariously perching on the back of the chair, wobbling back and forwards a little, yet seemingly keeping their focus on the stage either way. It’s kinda funny to watch, but at the same time he sort of wants to go and give the little thing a hand.

The boy is gone for quite a few minutes, but with a bird dæmon he could be outside, all the way on the other side of the school. Jonas could do it, and his own Silja is a feline – admittedly, she’s a lynx, infamous for going off on their own whenever they please. When he finally returns, there’s just enough light for Jonas to see it’s none other than the briefly famous Hanno Tauber. He can see him in shades and shadows, but it’s enough to make out the gentle way in which he scoops up the tiny bird before sitting. Somehow, Jonas thinks that the other boy left his dæmon on the chair more for the dæmon’s sake than his.

*

They go to the lake the weekend before the end of term, just the boys, since Martha is busy with something else – Magnus throws some innuendo, but neither Jonas or Bartosz ask about it, too embarrassed or too polite.

He doesn’t mind it. Sure, he wanted to see Martha, because he always wants to see Martha or be around her. It just doesn’t stop him from having fun with the rest, even Mikkel, who Jonas has something of a soft spot for, maybe because he’s the only kid he knows and is not too annoying or anything.

They go early, for once, since they’re not spending the whole afternoon there like most times, so they start getting ready to head back to their homes around one.

“Wait for me,” Jonas says as Silja and he skip into the thicket.

Magnus makes a crude comment and Bartosz’ Adalwolf barks amused, but they just leave the others behind and look for any hidden nook he could pee at without been seen by the rest. That’s how he stumbles into Hanno Tauber in very inconvenient circumstances, he supposes.

Jonas first sees the bike leaning against a tree at the same time Silja starts sniffing loudly into the air. He knows there are no clearings, no stretches of beach, however secluded, right here, but when his eyes find the other boy farther away and into the water line, all that leaves his mind in a rush.

Hanno is standing in the lake, water reaching above his knees and entirely naked, rivulets and droplets running down his body. Jonas can only see him from the back, but is enough to make him freeze, Silja standing next to him quiet as the dead, and for a moment that seems to stretch into a small eternity, the other boy doesn’t take note of them.

“You know you’re staring, right?” Until a tiny voice speaks up.

Silja and he snap out of it and Hanno half turns to look in their direction, prompting his surprise to turn into mortification. The thing about mortification though, is that it’s about as bad as shock and it doesn’t really help him with talking.

“He wants to pee,” and Silja isn’t quite helpful with that either.

“Is that so?”

What finally gets Jonas to get back on his feet, metaphorically speaking of course, is the fact that Hanno doesn’t turn back to face the lake, doesn’t try to cover himself, he doesn’t even look like he cares about any of it, so, he might as well follow his example or something like that. Still, he very pointedly doesn’t allow his eyes to wander anywhere bellow the other’s collarbones.

“Sorry, I didn’t know you were here,” he starts, dumbly. “We were just looking for somewhere more secluded.”

Admittedly, he can’t hear any of the others from where he’s standing, but he hadn’t realized that before seeing the bike and continuing forward.

“It’s pretty damn hidden here,” the tiny voice speaks again from somewhere to their right, but he remembers about the bite sized, inconspicuous bird that will likely be impossible to tell from the branches and leaves. Silja doesn’t look around either.

“We’re sorry we intruded,” he says with more energy. “We’ll just go and leave you alone and hopefully forget all about this.”

He turns to head away from the lake with Silja in tow.

“Don’t let a little bird bully you, Jonas,” he hears as an odd farewell.

Jonas says nothing back, but he can feel Hanno’s eyes following him into the trees.

*

On June 20th, he goes to the lake, visits his grandmother, and makes love to Martha.

On June 21st, he finds his father hanging from a wooden beam in the attic-turned-studio.

On June 24th, he comes face to face with his father’s letter, and all that comes with it, in one of the drawers of his desk.


	2. Act II

II

He returns to school after two months in a clinic that he remembers mostly in a daze, and as soon as he secures his bike and steps forward until he’s where everyone elsec coming in can see him, he feels a near crushing sensation of being seen, as if they all _know_.

A sudden weight lands on his shoulders.

“Welcome back to Hell.”

Jonas smiles, even if he still looks at Bartosz a bit like a deer in headlights, like _he_ knows. But that’s absurd, because he told him, of course he knows.

“Hey, everything alright?”

The blonde doesn’t really answer and Silja remains equally silent and stiff beside him, but they’ve known each other since they were infants, neither Jonas nor his dæmon have to say anything for Bartosz to understand.

“Don’t worry, it’ll be fine.”

*

On Wednesday, he goes up to his father’s studio for the first time in two months, with nothing but a flashlight. He feels like he’s looking for something, but he’s not sure what. The closest he has to an answer lies on his desk within an envelope that’s starting to look a bit torn from all the times he’s gone through its contents.

He stays there for maybe two full hours until he hears his mom’s car, and he quietly dashes downstairs. He doesn’t want to worry her, even if he hasn’t quite figured out how to reenter into her orbit.

*

He thought that after his father, letting go of Martha would be easy, comparatively speaking. Still, he goes to the rehearsal for Ariadne on Thursday, like a stupid moth drawn to a bright flame.

She looks beautiful in the white dress and red lipstick, and she does a great job, delivering her lines with fluidity and emotion – not that he knows much about any of this, he might just be biased.

At one point, during a monologue, Bartosz calls him. He numbly stares at his phone until the call ends, and when he looks up, Martha is watching him, even though he’s sitting all the way back in the dark. It frightens him, so he leaves.

Jonas had been planning on talking to Martha, explain a few things to her, because she doesn’t deserve to be left out, but suddenly it becomes too much, too little, and he panics, exits the room and briskly heads outside towards his bike and pedals back home at a slow, steady speed. Silja stays quiet for the rest of the evening, yet when they’re safe in their bedroom, she jumps onto the bed to lie next to him so he can bury his face into her fur. He decidedly doesn’t cry, but he can feel himself shaking like it’s cold in there.

When Bartosz calls him the next day and asks, Jonas can say that he’d gone to see the rehearsal until he left for home because he’d felt unwell and just leave it at that. And when Bartosz asks him if he wants to go to the play later that day with him, he can’t say no. Stupid moth, bright flame.

Mrs. Tiedemann drives them to the school that afternoon, her stout dæmon asking him how he’s been feeling lately and how he’s doing back at their school. Neither the dæmon or the woman ask him about his father or France or anything like that; Jonas isn’t sure if it’s because Bartosz told her not to or about the clinic, or maybe it’s something all her. He remembers hearing something somewhere about her father dying of old age when she was about as young as he is now.

When they reach the school’s parking lot, Bartosz asks his mother if she would like to go in with them, but Mrs. Tiedemann declines and stays in the car. She wishes them to have a good time with that smile of hers that makes him think there’s something sad about her and they get out to the cloudy afternoon. He sees her lean back into her seat and close her eyes before he walks into the school.

“Want to go wish her luck with me?”

“No,” he says with an easiness and confidence he doesn’t feel. “I’ll save us some seats while you see her. Tell her I say hi.”

The brunette leaves him to go find Martha’s dressing room, and Silja and he head to the audience area with everyone else coming in. It’s not at all full yet, mostly family members and a few theatre kids chatting in groups. He can see the Nielsen family near the front, right under the warm orange lights, and he does his best to act like he doesn’t see them as he goes to the left group of seats and chooses a spot around the middle he knows Bartosz will like.

Unthinkingly, he sits right behind Hanno Tauber.

He’s a bit too anxious to notice at first, until he finds Silja intently staring at something that turns out to be a small bird, definitively another dæmon by the way they stare right back. Up this close and under the orange glow he would say they’re maybe ten centimeters tall, with a light colored underbelly and pale to dark brown feathers over the top, but he couldn’t say the species if his life depended on it.

“You two sure like to _stare_ , huh?”

Jonas recognizes the voice immediately, even if he’d only heard it once months ago, and goes from confused to embarrassed in a fraction of a second. When Hanno half turns in his seat to look at them in an echo of that time not that long ago, looking impassive as ever, Jonas’ embarrassment expresses itself as a dark flush across his cheeks. He doesn’t need to look at himself in a mirror or ask anyone to know, he can feel it in the warmth spreading in his face and see it in the small smirk in Hanno’s face.

“We already apologized for that,” Silja softly grumbles from next to him and all that does is make Hanno even more amused, it seems.

“That’s not the point,” sighs the bird.

“You’re a pretty bird,” Jonas says, the hot embarrassment and the knot of nerves and self-loathing growing inside him making him sound snarkier than he’d intended.

The dæmon stares at him then and neither of them say anything until Hanno intervenes.

“She’s a little stint, _Calidris minuta_ ,” is all he says, but it’s enough to break some of the tension.

“I’ve never seen one before, I think.”

Hanno shrugs.

“They’re not very common around here. Most little stints can be found in the Nordic countries and some places of Africa.”

Hanno has a nice voice, he realizes, soft but with this sort of raspy undertone to it; his dæmon’s voice is nice too, if far more acute. This is the most they have spoken either before or after that time at the lake, and it’s a far more normal conversation than that one, too. Although, he might be making it a bit awkward with how directly he’s staring at both boy and dæmon. Not that his classmate seems to mind, however improper it could be.

“What’s her name?”

Hanno raises his eyebrows at him, his smirk still firmly in place.

“That’s a bit straightforward, don’t you think?”

“Yeah, maybe back when my grandma was our age.”

The other turns the other way suddenly and Jonas regrets saying anything, whatever may have insulted him or upset him, but when Hanno looks back he seems surprisingly, terribly amused.

“It’s Charlotte.”

He says the name soft and sweet, like some sort of small treasure.

“Why?”

He shrugs again.

“My mother named her, said it meant something like _free_ , but we never really got around to talk about it.”

There’s something about him when he speaks, how he speaks that feels sad and pained and knowing, relatable in some way, but Jonas is too afraid to pry and scare him off. So, he gives something back instead.

“My dad named my dæmon. Silja,” he offers while rubbing the lynx’s fluffy neck.

“ _Blind_?”

It’s Jonas’ time to shrug now.

“I’ve always wanted to be an artist, like him, so when she settled he told me that maybe if Silja was blind then I never would be.”

Hanno looks taken aback and Charlotte tilts her head in that universal dæmon way that means they’re curious or intrigued by something or someone.

“That’s a very peculiar thing to think.”

Jonas smiles and he knows he looks sad, can’t really help it.

“He was a very peculiar man.”

The boy nods in acquiescence and goes to turn back and make himself comfortable in his chair just as Jonas catches sight of Bartosz and Adalwolf heading their way. He doesn’t know what compels him to do so, maybe it’s because Hanno seems like a peculiar person himself, but he asks in a quiet rush: “Is that her only name?”

For dæmons to have public names alongside private ones isn’t exactly common nowadays, it was a custom that was starting to fall into disuse even before he was born, according to his father, but he suddenly remembers how nobody in school seems to know her name, and Charlotte, now precariously perching on Hanno’s right shoulder, turns towards him and tells him, just loud enough for him to hear: “Cal. You can call me Cal.”

*

The Saturday after the play, his mother leaves for the city and he stays at his grandmother’s. They haven’t kept in touch since his father died, they’ve barely spoken to each other the few times he has called or visited her, but he doesn’t resent her for any of it, unlike his mother.

They have a good enough time: he brings cake from her favorite bakery and they eat it with tea while watching some nature documentary on Netflix. They go to bed at around ten, because she starts feeling tired from the day, and since it’s too early for his new, more erratic sleeping schedule, he takes a book from one of the living room shelves with him.

The following morning, he wakes up from a nightmare at some ungodly hour, but when he gets up and goes to the bathroom, he notices he’s not the only one awake.

“Do you dream about him too?” His grandmother asks him as she pours tea into their mugs.

Jonas nods and debates with himself if he’s feeling up to try some toast, maybe.

“Sometimes I dream about the day I met him, when he was just a hurt and lonely boy.”

“I never knew he’d been adopted.”

He’s known for months, now, since he read his father’s letter, but he’d never talked about it with his grandmother, or even his own mother. It’s always felt more like an anecdote to him. _I’m so sorry for killing myself, son. Oh, did I ever tell you I was adopted by your grandma?_

He might be unfair with his dad, so what?

“He’d been in a car accident with his mother. He’d watched her die,” Ines Kahnwald keeps her eyes on her tea, like it was a magic crystal ball showing her the past, but her dæmon, Leah, looks at him as gently as any magpie could ever achieve. “He’d been sad and alone and quiet the first few days, and when he opened up to me and started talking and joking, I grew to love him like he was my own. But I guess something like that has a way of sticking with you.”

“Did he ever tell you about his father?”

Ines looks up at that, surprised.

“His father? Well, no. I remember he told me he didn’t really have one. It was because of that that the adoption went as smoothly as it did, I suppose.”

He takes the bus back home after washing the dishes from lunch and changing a lightbulb. He doesn’t feel better, but he doesn’t feel worse either when he has his session with Doctor Doppler.

*

The following week he doesn’t quite avoid Martha, but he doesn’t seek her out either. It’s a strange balance that relies on their current common factor: Bartosz.

Even so, he can tell she wants to talk to him and that she’s growing impatient, but whenever it seems like they’re about to have a moment alone he does his best to avoid it and whenever Martha’s eyes meet his in that intent and questioning way of hers he adverts her gaze, regardless of how obvious he might be at it.

Sometimes, only sometimes, his own gaze falls on Hanno Tauber.

It’s entirely accidental, or at the very least unconscious, and he’s almost certain that Charlotte has caught him at it a few times, but at no point does she, or Hanno himself, approach him to ask him to stop, so, _he_ stops his eyes from ricocheting around to avoid staring at him on top of Martha sometime around Wednesday morning.

*

On the morning of Friday the 15th of November, his mother tells him she’ll be spending the night out again and he _knows_. He knows, but he doesn’t say anything, just nods while trying to eat his cereal and keep it in.

“So, you’ll be staying with Ines,” he doesn’t comment on how she’s stopped calling her _your_ _grandma_ , either.

“Is it alright if I just stay home with a friend instead?”

She smiles warmly at him.

“With Bartosz? Of course.”

“Ok.”

He doesn’t correct her. It’s not as bad as about other people, but he’s been thinking about Hanno Tauber more and more this last week: at school, at home, at the weirdest times, like late on Wednesday when he was listening to that song about someone finding something in the woods somewhere.

It’s not that he dislikes the boy, he tells Silja as he rides his bike to meet up with his therapist; he would like to get to know him better, become friends, even. He just wants him out of his head; his dad and Martha are always there, and he can’t get them out, but maybe Hanno…

When they stop at a crossroad, Silja says that’s not how that sort of thing works, but she’s game as long as he’s careful. He blushes and her tails twitches.

Later that day, after Bartosz, Martha and even Magnus have asked him if he’s alright at least once each, he walks up to Hanno at the end of their Physics class and asks him if they could talk alone for a bit. The taller boy gives him a questioning look – not unlike the one Martha and Bartosz had given him before, although less suspicious –, but doesn’t comment on it and neither does Charlotte, and they follow him to the crowded hallway and then to a more secluded, quiet staircase. Hanno sits on the top steps before the landing with Charlotte ensconced in his jacket’s large pocket, and Jonas stays standing a few steps below, making them roughly eye to eye; Silja paces between the steps and the landing, nervous, not knowing what to do with herself as he pretends confidence. When he tries to start, he draws a blank.

“This is awkward,” Silja blurts out from where she’s decided to sit near the window, far from them.

Hanno smirks with his eyes fixed on Jonas.

“You keep doing that.”

“Doing what?”

“Smirking. I’m not even funny.”

His smirk grows almost into a full smile before he reins it in as he looks to the side, bashful. Jonas has never seen him _bashful_ , not even when they were at the lake.

“You don’t have to be funny to do funny things sometimes, without meaning to,” he retorts, and this close and in this light Jonas can see that he has gorgeous blue eyes; no wonder everyone was falling on their feet to get his attention last year.

“I don’t think that makes it better.”

“Then I’ll stop doing it if it really bothers you,” he acquiesces calmly. “You wanted to talk about something?”

He’s not any less nervous or awkward, but he’s gotten this far, he might as well go through with it.

“I’ll be home alone tonight, and I was wandering if you would like to keep me company,” there, that wasn’t so bad, except for the hot embarrassment on his cheeks and Silja pacing again giving him away.

For a terrible moment, Hanno doesn’t do or say anything until Jonas starts to fidget too.

“You mean, like a sleepover?”

This is worse than he thought it’d be, woah.

“Please don’t play dumb with me,” he’s getting redder and redder, he can feel it, but there’s nothing he can do about it. The only way out is through.

“Alright, fine then. How would you even know if I’m into men?”

“I don’t.”

Jonas notices that although he must be as embarrassed as he is, Hanno doesn’t blush, the only sign of red near his face being the tips of his ears. That is so unfair.

“Why me?”

“Why not?”

Charlotte makes a small noise that could be either amusement or sheer alarm, and there’s no way of knowing because birds are weird with facial expressions and Hanno seems like he’s feeling less of either and more concern.

“You don’t even know me.”

“So?” He knows he sounds lost instead of defiant or composed and that bothers him something terrible.

“Is it because you saw me naked in the lake that time?”

Hanno’s starting to sound upset and Jonas wishes he were better with words and people.

“No, yes, maybe. I tried not to look too much, you know, when you turned and all,” he has to make a monumental effort not to continue with the awkward babble. “I just think you’re hot and that I’d like to have sex with you, ok?”

Hanno’s answer doesn’t even matter at this point, because even if he says yes and goes with him and they have fantastic sex or whatever, this instant has already earned itself its top spot in the most embarrassing moments of his short life. At least it stuns the other enough that he doesn’t look upset anymore.

Jonas breathes deep and closes his eyes for a second. He can still try to salvage this acquaintanceship, he supposes.

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“No, it’s alright.”

“It’s not. I wanted to make friends with you and instead I made it awkward and weird and we’ll never talk again.”

“You have an odd way to make friends,” Hanno murmurs. “Could you, maybe, look at me, please?”

Jonas complies because it’s the least he can do for the other, after all the shame he’s put them through.

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be, I’m as bad at this kind of thing as you are, and you caught me off guard,” he has this softer look on his face, but he still seems concerned. “Are you sure you want to do this? With me? I understand that you think I’m, uh, attractive, but I’m not the greatest lover in town, you know?”

“Me neither,” he manages to answer, maybe even more embarrassed. “I’ve had sex once, and it was with a girl.”

“Huh. Alright.”

Hanno and Charlotte stare at him for long enough that he thinks the boy will end up refusing.

“Alright,” he repeats and then interrupts himself with a sigh. “Alright. Give me your phone number,” he hands Jonas his own phone so he can save it. “I’m supposed to help Erna with her restaurant tonight, so I won’t be available until 10 or 11,” Jonas nods in a daze. “Right, so I’ll text you, you send me your address and later I’ll let you know when I’m heading your way, ok?”

When Hanno texts later that afternoon, Jonas nearly laughs in front of Bartosz. When he gets a short _omw_ at around 10.30, he doesn’t really give it much though and continues to lie in the floor of his father’s studio staring at nothing. When he opens his front door a little after 11 and sees Hanno standing there, breathing a bit harshly and with Charlotte pacing at their feet, inspecting everything, he feels such a wild rush he might faint.

*

It really isn’t the best sex in the world, or even just in Winden, but after the awkwardness from earlier that day, he’s relieved to find out that he can do something stupid and clumsy and the worse that will happen is that they’ll both have a laugh before Hanno gives him a firm, gentle hand with whatever he needs help. And he likes it, he really does, and maybe Hanno likes it too, but he can’t bring himself to say or ask anything.

And afterwards, Hanno stays. Jonas had asked on a whim, just threw the suggestion in there, half-joking, half-serious, and all the other boy did was smirk under all his shower-wet hair and text Erna he’d be staying over at a friend’s.

So, when he wakes up the following morning with Hanno Tauber still quietly sleeping next to him, he feels pretty good about life, all things considered. And when his mom gets home around noon, he can let the whole Ulrich Nielsen thing slide like water off a duck’s back, his mood is that good.

It’s not good enough to face Martha, though.

He sees Alphonse first, the grey heron standing in silence over a rain puddle in the middle of the road, and his sight alone is enough to shake him to his very core, all thoughts about Hanno’s gentle hands and soft voice forgotten. Then Silja makes a growl like sound and he follows her line of sight until his eyes find Martha, standing just a couple of meters farther away.

She looks as beautiful as ever, even with her hair and clothes wet from the rain.

“You’ve been ignoring me,” she accuses.

“I’m sorry,” he gives.

“What happened to ‘we’re perfect for each other’?” She asks.

“This is wrong,” he offers.

“Why? Because of Bartosz?” She demands.

“No, yes,” he tries to explain.

Too little too late.

She kisses him, something far more insistent, almost animal, than they’d had that night months ago, eons ago. And he wishes he could say that it means nothing to him, that none of the nerve ends in his body light up, that he doesn’t kiss her back. But the best he manages is a hasty retreat and a choked off apology thrown in between them almost as an afterthought.

At this point he’s not sure who he’s apologizing to anymore: his father, Martha, Bartosz, Hanno or himself?

*

On Monday morning, he gets in a lame excuse of a fistfight with his best friend, the person he’s known and loved almost as a brother since they were six years old. If he’s being honest, between him kissing Martha and Bartosz talking shit about his father, they deserve whatever ache, bruise, or cut that remains.

“Who were you with on Friday night?” Bartosz had asked, and he’d felt like laughing, he’d felt like crying, because that night with Hanno he had been so nervous and so elated he’d forgotten about Martha and Bartosz and his father’s letter.


End file.
